This invention relates to a method and apparatus for handling ink, and particularly to a method and apparatus for handling viscous ink which does not flow well.
Ink manufacturing companies prefer to sell ink in five gallon or larger containers with various supply companies re-bucketing it to gallons and quarts as they desire. Many companies using ink choose to work with five gallon containers since containers larger than five gallons would be difficult to handle. Further, inventory is easier to control with five gallon containers. Alternatively, the price of ink in one gallon containers is too high to justify the increased expense.
Various pumping systems are offered by a number of pump manufacturers to assist in the re-bucketing process and also to automatically distribute the ink to various job sites as needed. However, the cheaper pumping systems are not able to keep viscous ink fed to the pump and thus the pump tends to work in fits and spurts. The more effective of these pumping systems are expensive. Further, both types of pumping systems tend to leave a considerable amount of ink in the supply bucket after the pump has completed its function. This requires that the bucket be hand scraped to salvage the remaining ink. This also makes it impractical to recycle the container.
Plastisol ink in particular is difficult to work with since it will not pour and sticks to everything that it touches. One system for dealing with this problem utilizes a pressure plate which fits into the top of the ink supply bucket and includes an opening through which an ink supply pipe is slideably fitted. The pipe is connected by a tube to the ink pump. As the ink is drawn from the container, the plate slides down the supply pipe and the bucket side walls to force the ink downwardly and prevent cavitation around the pipe opening at the container bottom. However, the supply bucket sides are usually tapered such that the pressure plate cannot be sized to cleanly wipe the container sidewalls. This allows the plastisol ink to slip between the plate and the bucket sides, thus creating a mess and leading to further waste. Also, considerable ink remains in the bottom of the supply bucket when the pump is done.